The Most
Important Part of Practice

2/15/2017

By Mike Gustafson//Contributor

Say you’re cooking a soup. You throw ingredients into a
pot, turn up the heat, add water. “The most important part of
any soup is the seasoning,” someone says. So you add
seasoning — salt, pepper. “The most important part of
any soup is the long, slow simmer,” someone else says. So you
simmer for several hours. “The most important part of any
soup is the presentation.” So you sprinkle some chopped
onions, drizzle olive oil on top, put it into a pretty bowl.

Any competitive swimming season is like cooking a soup. You have
your season-long training (meat and potatoes). Your taper
(seasoning). Your shave-down (presentation). For a swim season to
come together, everything needs to cohesively work. You can’t
arbitrarily add pancakes or peanut butter to a soup and expect
greatness. Likewise, you can’t boil a lump of stale potatoes
at the last minute and expect to wow your audience. A swim season
takes time to formulate, and, if executed perfectly, will come
together after a long, slow process.

While there are many theories about what is, exactly, the most
important part of the swim season — the holiday training? the
pre-season workouts? the taper? — I’d argue that the
most important part is not anything to do with actual swimming
itself. The most important part of the swimming season, and swim
practice, is the five minutes before practice. The five minutes
before you dive in, every single day.

These five, itty bitty minutes is the time when you conjure your
recipe.

When you look at your ingredients and think, “What can I make
out of this?”

Many swimmers email and ask how to train better, accomplish faster
times, perform to their best abilities. Many believe, then fail to
understand, that a season’s greatness is not won or lost in
the two-week taper. The season’s greatness isn’t
necessarily about a natural-born ability, or a physical attribute
you either have or don’t have (where are the onions? How
can I make this soup without pepper?). The season’s
greatness, like any good soup, is that daily five-minute pre-plan.
When you conjure the daily goal. When you look at energy levels,
your pre-practice mentality, and you take stock of your resources,
and come up with a recipe for success.

I’ve long advocated that the most important part of any
season, and swim practice, is the five minutes before diving in.
Those five minutes when you and your teammates stand on the pool
deck in swimsuits and goggles. Instead of joking or gossiping, or
thinking how tired you are, take five minutes to make a practice
plan. Spend five minutes thinking about the upcoming practice.
Think about your body and your daily goal.

For example: You arrive to practice and you’re exhausted.
You’re stressed and thinking about tomorrow’s big
statistics test. You don’t really feel like being at the
pool.

Instead of leaping in and thinking these negative,
counter-productive thoughts for the next two hours, spend five
minutes — just five minutes tops — to acknowledge how
you’re feeling that day. Think, “Okay, I’m
exhausted and not feeling this workout. How can I best get
something out of these next two hours? What is one thing I can work
on?”

Simply re-calibrating your mind during those five pre-practice
minutes can have a net positive effect for the rest of practice.
Rather than diving into the pool and feeling rushed or stressed,
you can breathe, exhale, and come up with a small, mini-recipe. You
can take an accurate look at how you’re feeling, what this
practice may look like, and conjure up a great-tasting soup de
jour.

The most important part of any soup is not the presentation, but
the recipe. To come up with a great recipe requires a few minutes
to think. To ponder. To calibrate and conjure.

My advice to younger swimmers who are feeling burned out, tired,
exhausted, and craving an escape from the pool…? (Which
usually happens during Februarys…)

Place importance not only on practice, but the five minutes
before practice. Think about what you’re about to
do. Think about why you want to do it. Just coming up with a plan
— just thinking about your daily recipe — will allow
you to get more out of your practice than improvisation.